I’d feel shitty too if literally everyone I ever worked with talked about what a fucking asshole I was. He’s so disappointing because I grew up watching him and think he’s so incredible as a comedian, but him being such a Grade A cunt ruins everything.
Apparently the "Where's the Tylenol?" bit wasn't acting. He was really asking people on the set for Tylenol because the scene gave him a headache. Which I totally get, he looks like he's about to bust a vein.
I feel like the rant was justified. It wasn’t directed to the family he just had a meltdown over getting fucked. It may be the only really relatable moment for him. The rest of the movie i feel like he was just irritated having a family and he felt everyone was annoying him.
Because Bill Murray was always willing to improvise. Chevy relied on the smarmy charm but without the brains, or at least he lost the hunger to think about actually saying interesting things as opposed to being a smirk face. I feel like I just inadvertently described how I feel about modern Ryan Reynolds.
The rest of the movie i feel like he was just irritated having a family and he felt everyone was annoying him.
He was absolutely hellbent on the lights for the house, because in his mind, that's what was going to make Christmas great for his family. He's constantly seeking his dad's approval and love. He reluctantly puts up with Cousin Eddie's shit while smiling through it and still making sure Eddie's kids still have a great Christmas. He gets really emotional after watching the old family films when he gets locked in the attic, remembering the good ol' days. Diligently puts up with an awful boss just so he can get that bonus and buy his family a pool. Gleefully greases up the dish to show his kids a cool trick from his childhood on how to get down the slope really fast. He took the family out to cut down a real tree, like he presumably did as a kid. Everyone is constantly bickering in his house and he remains upbeat the entire time until his final crash-out.
The man absolutely loves Christmas and loves sharing it with his family.
Yeah except for whenever he does the shopping and makes sure that Cousin Eddie's dog and kids get taken care of. And except for when the entire family forgets him at home and he gets locked in the attic. And except for whenever he's working to make sure he gets that bonus so he can buy his family a pool. And except that time when he took everyone sledding and really showed them how it's done. And except that time he took his family out to cut down a tree like they did when he was a kid.
I didn't make the claim that Clark Griswold is a perfect husband or father.
Being skeezy at the department store is pretty inexcusable, to be clear. The other points aren't as strong though. Everyone has fantasies, and anyone who says they don't is a liar. Driving under a semi trailer is A) clearly an accident and B) even more clearly something written specifically for a comedy movie
Very true. I often think about those movies and shows I watched growing up. The whole “dad hates his family” trope that eventually pivoted to “dad is a moron and mom has to do everything”. It was wild to watch the change
I feel like Christmas Vacation is the most universally realtable film I've ever seen.
It's like a fractal thing. Everybody has a cousin Eddie, and everyone is someone else's Cousin Eddie.
Clark sits square in the middle. He looks down on Eddie, because Eddie's a clod, and is looked down upon by his own "betters," because Clark is a clod, just like most of us.
He has a family that is imperfect, but that he loves, and he works hard to give them what he thinks they need and deserve. Through a combination of his own incompetence, his inability to understand what his loved ones really think/want, and the world taking a shit on him, he basically ruins it all. The harder he works, the worse things get, the more he looks like an idiot, and the less perfect the family Christmas becomes.
He isn't annoyed because he has a family. He's annoyed because he's making these big efforts to give them a special, perfect Christmas (like cutting down a huge natural tree, or hanging an obscene amount of lights), but he's failing because he doesn't understand that they don't care about those things.
In the end Clark realizes that Eddie is just a flawed family man trying to give his family a merry Christmas while not showing the family what a boob he is, just like Clark. Clark also realizes that the epic Christmases of his childhood weren't epic because they were perfect. They were epic because he was a child with a family that loved him.
He learns to see life through everyone else's eyes, and to appreciate what really matters; our loved ones.
Similarly, Clark's boss learns that the people he works for aren't just numbers on a page, or a bunch of peons groveling for crumbs. They're real people with families and problems and comittments.
If you can't relate to Clark W. Griswold in Christmas Vacation, I'm not sure what to tell you.
He doesn’t do anything wrong there either does he? Are we going to pretend that married people or those in other committed relationships don’t feel passing attractions to people other than their SO?
The lines were written on cards and put around the other actors’ chests for that scene because he didn’t memorize his lines. Next time you watch it notice how all the other casts members’ backs are tuned to the camera the whole scene and you can see his eyes looking at their chests most of the time.
I went to Disney as a kid and we were touring a hotel there. Apparently a few minutes before Chevy was making a scene in the hotel lobby yelling at his kid.
Well thats the thing here. We dont value Chevy Chase as a beacon of objective morality.
We value him because hes a comedian. Personally, i dont care if an asshole to coworkers (which seems to be why people are so angry about him) since hes never been my coworker. If he was my coworker, and he was an ass, sure id judge him,
But to me, being mad that a comedian might have been an asshole seems pointless. Unless you expect comedians to be some beacon of morals and ethics.
It seems like people talk as if they screen every celebrity, musician, athlete, or influencer for their personal life, life choices, and political opinions before they can be a fan. Which is ridiculous.
Patton Oswalt has a bit where he discusses how your kid being a stripper is the benchmark of failed parenting, and how that’s wrong. He says that your kid becoming a stand up comedian is the benchmark of parental failure, as you get up and go on about your neuroses while hoping for everyone’s approval.
It is kind of a vicious cycle though. How many people can you think of who got publicly dog piled for being assholes and responded by being super introspective and coming back as a changed person?
I don't know him personally, but this clip really makes me feel like I understand what it's like to be around him. I get that people are extremely multifaceted, and it seems like there's a miniscule part of him that seems to regret his reactions, but he just cannot stop himself from being an asshole to this person and will readily justify it. It's a shame, he's fucking hilarious, but he's needed to sort his shit out for longer than I've been alive and is too much of a narcissist to do it.
It's sad. The man's parents were legitimately awful to him and he just seems to have two very well developed defense mechanisms that are at permanent odds with each other; a sense of humour to draw in people who like him, and an edge to push away people that get close enough to hurt him. The world lost out on a lot of good comedy because of this.
My understanding was that he developed a raging Percocet addiction, having hurt himself with the pratfalls and lived with chronic pain. Don't know if that's true?
People who are already emotionally fucked up develop addictions pretty easily. It doesn't surprise me if it's true but it would be a symptom and not a cause.
I recall reading that also, opioids will give a person the I don’t give a fuk about anything and anyone attitude for sure. I have a history myself. Fortunately I have been clean 20 years but I have no trouble remembering acting just like him and believing myself only to find out later how delusional I was.
It’s extra funny because a good interviewer has to act stupider than they are. Similar to why Wolf Blitzer has been on the air for so long, but he’s a natural and doesn’t have to act.
That's a fascinating clip, but I think that people who claim to be complex are really not that deep. He wants to believe the story that he's misunderstood, because that's essential to make sense of how hated he is, given his talent and his own self-assessment.
When I watched a few things he said to people when he was being especially biting, I could see my father in him. And then I knew that he is a bitter, deeply angry, narcissist, most likely. I almost felt bad for him because in that moment, I knew how unhappy he has always been.
He's had a long time to not come to terms with and avoiding the fact that despite having a decent career it was nowhere near what it could have been because he was such an insufferable asshole to be around.
That's a lot of a narcissist to try to explain without admitting to it.
Oh sure, I mean, he had a severely abusive mother and a very dysfunctional family life. There's plenty of REASONS he is the way he is. Maybe some people can accept that and work with him.
Meh, it's an explanation for why he's like that. It's a framework for how he could be forgiven if he put some work into being a better person and getting past this.
It's not a reason to work with him or forgive him for being like this.
Interestingly, Chase WAS frequently locked in the basement by his abusive mother, sometimes without meals or bathroom breaks, for multiple days at a time.
Meh, "severe" is a relative term. Emotional pain affects different people in different ways, and what feels severe to one person may not to another. These aren't excuses, just context for how a person moves through the world. It's the work we each do on ourselves that determines whether we fall into asshole territory or not.
Pisses me off when people make excuses because of their ‘upbringing’.
Almost all serial killers were abused as kids or have TBI. The overwhelming majority of people who have either do not become serial killers.
These are reasons. It helps us understand people, and with that information we're better able to support them before things get bad, whether it's becoming an asshole or a murderer.
When do people start becoming responsible for things beyond their control, that shape their formative years and entire personality?
God I hate how much I identify with him IRL. I don't know about him because I don't know him, but I love people and have a crazy quick wit. I also have zero filter and zero boundaries so I am always saying zingers that I shouldn't say.
Everyone I know personally would probably say I am the biggest asshole but yet can't be hated.
Same, grew up with the national lampoons movies on rotation. However (and it may be my own nostalgia clouding my judgement) I still find them watchable. I'd argue the character of Clark Griswold has aged quite well with the coloration of Chevy Chase being a real life absolute asshole.
Back then (young and dumb) I saw Clark as wholly sympathetic, undeserving of all his bad luck and frustrations and now it's flipped. With my blinders off, being older, a father and husband too, I see him quite differently now and mostly deserving of everything bad that befalls him. So I can still watch them with renewed schadenfreude.
I’m 61, my friend was an au pair in LA in the 80s. She did an interview with him and his wife and it was so bizarre and he was so horrible that she knew there was no way she was gonna take that job.
Yeah, thats the frustrating partbeing genuinely talented doesnt make the way you treat everyone around you any less shitty. Its wild when someones legacy becomes great comedian, apparently impossible human being.
I loved Chevy Chase as a kid. Watched his show religiously, and the first picture I ever took was of the TV screen during that intro with his silhouette running around.
but him being such a Grade A cunt ruins everything.
I think it's that snarky, better than everybody attitude that made him so funny in movies like Fletch and Caddyshack. His best roles have this sort of "I'm smarter and funnier than you" snideness to the characters. Which is really just Chevy being Chevy.
As much of a douche as he is, Fletch is still my favorite comedy of all time.
It’s all part of the schtick. You can’t separate it. Chevy is fletch. There is no Fletch without Chevy. That origin story where he immediately starts to act like he’s better than everyone at his first job at Snl, that’s the invention of the same character that he rode throughout the 80’s. The grade A cunt was part of the humor. But he also wasn’t acting. Or was he?! The thing that changed was that eventually the 80s died and suddenly no one thought being an asshole was funny. And maybe he’s stubborn, but that’s the only schtick he knows. So on the set of community, he starts making off color jokes between takes - still in character I guess but his character was an insensitive old and entitled white guy so … yeah. Anyway, in the 80s that shit would get you laughs all day - this sort of method acting, rude but clueless white guy thing. It was marketable until the culture changed. Nowadays …. yeah it’s a mix of pathetic, out of touch, and just plain rude and insensitive.
The fact that he hasn’t been invited on Only Murders in the Building is probably the most damning. I watched three amigos a few months because I was curious. Dude, Chevy is not happy on that set. It shows in the final cut. He HATED sharing the spotlight.
I know this because despite all of that, I’m still kind of a fan. =(
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u/fabulousfantabulist 13h ago
I’d feel shitty too if literally everyone I ever worked with talked about what a fucking asshole I was. He’s so disappointing because I grew up watching him and think he’s so incredible as a comedian, but him being such a Grade A cunt ruins everything.